Finally I have started with my first travel post about Netherlands! Yessss! As we traveled in four different places, then there will be two posts. Today I am going to talk about big cities- Amsterdam and Rotterdam!Welcome to Netherlands!Destination:Amsterdam and Rotterdam, NetherlandsDuration of Trip:

In both of them I spent 1 day. Travelling to Destination:

As our accommodation was in town called Utrecht, then we started all our local trips from there and always with train, because it felt the fastest and most comfortable choice, by the way, there's also trains which has 2 floors. Those trains, which went to our destinations, departed at least a couple of times per hour. I believe that there's some kind of day/ month card system, but in every day we just bought a new ticket (paper card with chip) which costed 1 extra euro. Also trains has two classes, we always bought a second class ticket, because the first class didn't seem to be so different, the classes are marked on doors and walls. Amsterdam: Two-way ticket for adult (we didn't find any tickets for students) from Utrecht to Amsterdam costed around 15€ per person and the ride took around 25 minutes.Rotterdam: Ticket with return for adults from Utrecht to Rotterdam costed around 21€, the ride took around 40 minutes. About Local Life:

Amsterdam: Amsterdam in the biggest city in Netherlands. For me it's a city, which is quite big, noisy and full of tourists. In there we learned a Dutch word, Geodgen- which doese'nt have a 100% right translation, but it kind of means "technically illegal, but officially tolerated" and it has 3 main rules: 1) Doesn't harm no-one; 2) Economically useful; 3)There's no public promotion, but everybody knows, where to get that needed product/service- basically this is how the Red Light District services and coffee shops with hash brownies are working.//Rotterdam: Rotterdam is the second biggest city in Netherlands, in II WW it was the only city in Holland which got bombed, thanks to that it has today a very unique architecture, besides of high, weird and interesting buildings, there's also many traditional houses. 45% of Rotterdam's population are born out of the country, so there's also a very colourful culture. The biggest harbor of Europe is also in Rotterdam.Accommodation:

In this trip we had only one accommodation and it was in Utrecht, already in next post I will speak about it more!Sightseers:

Amsterdam: I have with Amsterdam a weird relationship- I waited so much to go there and when I finally arrived then there were so many people and fake things, that I lost my interest. I believe that for some people there's for sure a lot of things to do, but for me I had only few goals: I wanted to visit Anne Franki museum, Red Light district and see those beautiful canals.A night before Amsterdam I read from Internet, that there's two ways how to buy tickets for Anne Frank museum. One option was to buy them from Interent, where there's two months plan, which are usually all sold out and which is possible to buy only from official website; or the second option was to buy them from the museum, there was also said that they start selling them from museum in the other half of day, so around 16.00. In reality they only accepted tickets, which were bought from Internet and there wasn't any chance to buy them from museum, but if I understood correctly then this kind of system is only until midsummer, because a part of museum is under constructions. So the only option was to buy tickets from Internet, luckily on the same day they sold some extra tickets, because a night before all tickets for the next day were sold out, one ticket for adult costed 10€. As there's a lot of people then in every 15 minutes they let in a certain amount of people, while buying a ticket you can choose on what time you want to go to museum, the time for entering to museum is 15 minutes but you can stay there as long as you want. As this place is small and with steep stairs, then for people who has problem with walking needs to consider that for sure! Although I wasn't super excited after visiting the museum, I am happy that I still did it!The rest of 2 goals I managed to do/see in free tour, at this time we desided to take Sandemns Neweuropeone, where we had a super cool guide called Rimousky aka Rimu. The same company makes also a tour, where they put focus only to Red Light district with it's colourful history! In Amsterdam there's also Van Goghi museumand near of it there's a sign of Amsterdam, as I felt that I am not ready for Van Goghi museum, then at this time we skipped those places.//Rotterdam: In Rotterdam we also took a free tour, but at this time from Free Walking Tour Rotterdam company, we had a very lovely guide Remy and with him there were only 7 of us, so it was a very nice and individual tour! My favourite places were Cube Houses(it's possible to go in),Statue of Santa Claus,City HalljaErasmuse Bridge, which for me as an old Erasmus student was like a holy place. Besides those places there's a different tours to harbor(it's not a good idea to go there alone, because it's so big) and a super cool tour with water bus, sadly we didn't had enough time and strenght to go to harbor and we just didn't find the water bus. I also heard that the Sea Museum is cool.Place to Eat:

Amsterdam: While I searched information about Amsterdam I found a suggestion that we should try food called Rijsttafel, which is basically different types of rices, it's originally from Indoneisa, but thanks to colony system it reached to Europe. While we were with the tour in China Town our guide show us a good place where to eat, later, when we went there, it came out that it's a Thailand place called Birdand they don't have that dish, but it was still a good place, also full of people.//Rotterdam: During the free tour we heard about some good eating places, even our break was in one of them. In the first day, when we asked from our accommodation host about local food, she said that there isn't nothing special, but in Rotterdam we found out, that there is a fast food called kapsalon, which is made of kebab, cheese, sauce and salat. It's pretty heavy one, but the taste is super good, the guide said that the best kapsalon in Rotterdam is in place called Jaffa, which is in Witte de Withstraat street. This place looks very simple and probably to some people even a bit dirty, but the food was really good! Our tour break was on the same street in the ice cream shop called De Ijssalon, the ice cream was actually really good, especially the pistachios one. There's a lot of cozy places on Witte de Withstraatstreet, I am pretty sure that everyone will find something from there! Across the river is a Hotel New York, in front of that there are cozy chairs , where is possible to enjoy sea, sun and drinks, it's forbidden to drink alcohol in there, for that there's a small outdoor cafe.Free Time:Amsterdam: I am pretty sure that there's a quite lot things to do, but as we were there only for a day, then we didn't have so much free time. One place, where I wanted to go was a Madame Tussaud's museum, but as there were some other more urgent places, what I wanted to see, then we didn't had enough time to visit it, luckily it's not the only city where I can do it. A couple of day before going to Amsterdam I realized that there is a Primark, so you can imagine, how I spent my last 2 hours in Amsterdam!

//Rotterdam: One of my favourite places in Rotterdam was a Market Hall, where are a lot of cool eating places, it reminds me a bit a market in Tallinn which is calledBalti Jaama Turg. Second cool moment was then, when we wanted to go to drive with water bus, but we didn't find it, so we took a water taxi, for me, as a girl, who doesn't have big experiences with boats, was that 5-minute-long ride enough to got my daily amount of adrenaline. We used water taxi to go from near of Market Hall to Hotel New York, later we walked back to other side crossing the Erasmus Bridge. One way for one person in city center with water taxi costed 4.50€And those were our adventures in Netherlands cities, in next post I will take you to smaller and more cuter places! See you soon!Cheers!